YouTube Partner Programme: What Creators Need to Know.

Full YouTube monetisation currently needs 1,000 subscribers, plus either 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months or 10 million valid public Shorts views in the last 90 days.

A second, lower tier opens at 500 subscribers and gives access to fan funding features, though not to a share of ad revenue.

On 10 August 2026 YouTube announced the first significant changes to the programme since 2018. They take effect on 1 February 2027 and raise the bar for new applicants, so timing now matters.

The thresholds, exactly as YouTube states them

Two routes into the full programme, the tier that shares revenue from ads and YouTube Premium. Both need 1,000 subscribers, plus either:

• 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months.
• 10 million valid public Shorts views in the last 90 days.

Two routes into the expanded tier, covering memberships, Super Chat and Super Stickers, Super Thanks, Jewels and gifts, and Shopping. Both need 500 subscribers and 3 valid public uploads in the past 90 days, plus either:

• 3,000 valid public watch hours in the past 12 months.
• 3 million valid public Shorts views in the past 90 days.

What counts is narrower than most teams assume. Valid watch hours come only from public long-form videos, so Shorts never count towards them. Valid Shorts views come only from public Shorts in the Shorts Feed. Private and unlisted uploads, deleted videos, ad campaigns and image posts are excluded throughout.

That sets how often you need to publish long before it sets what you make.

What changes on 1 February 2027

New applicants will need 8,000 qualified watch hours in the last 365 days, or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days, to enter the programme for ads and Premium revenue sharing. Both figures are double the current ones.

Shorts revenue sharing becomes conditional too. From that date a creator needs 10 million qualified Shorts views over the last 90 days to earn ads and subscription revenue on Shorts. Channels below it stay in the programme, keep earning on long-form, and resume automatically once they pass 10 million again.

Premium Lite is expanding to every country where YouTube Premium is offered. Creators earn from a dedicated pool per subscription type, 30% of net subscription revenue for Premium and 60% for Premium Lite, shared out by member watch time and views, from which creators take 55% on long-form and 45% on Shorts.

Fan funding and shopping thresholds are unchanged, and YouTube says the new entry requirement will not affect creators already in the programme.

What YouTube has not said yet

The announcement does not mention subscribers anywhere. The 1,000 subscriber requirement still sits on YouTube’s own eligibility page, so whether it survives alongside the new figures is undocumented.

Nor is “qualified” defined. The current pages say “valid public” and publish an exclusion list, and nobody has said whether the two mean the same thing.

The new earning routes promised to channels below the Shorts threshold are named but not specified. Treat 1 February 2027 as the day the terms change, not the day the detail arrives.

The requirements that have nothing to do with audience size

Size is the requirement teams watch. The rest are the easy ones to get wrong.

• Live in a country or region where the programme is available. The United Kingdom is on YouTube’s list.
• No active Community Guidelines strikes on the channel.
• 2 Step Verification turned on for the Google account.
• Access to advanced features on YouTube.
• An active AdSense for YouTube account linked to the channel.
• Compliance with YouTube’s channel monetisation policies.

The awkward ones for a brand are about ownership. The AdSense account sits under a Google account, that account belongs to a person, and 2 Step Verification is tied to a device they carry. When they leave, the payout path leaves with them.

How Shorts money is actually worked out

Shorts do not pay per view, which is why so much of the advice about them is wrong.

YouTube pools the ad revenue from the Shorts Feed each month, then allocates it to monetising creators by their share of total engaged views from monetising creators’ Shorts, country by country.

Music licensing comes out first. A Short with no music sends 100% of its revenue to the creator pool, one track sends 50%, and two tracks send 33%. From what is left a creator keeps 45%, whether or not music was used. Long-form is a 55% share.

So the same view is worth different amounts by month, country and track. Any per view figure quoted anywhere describes somebody else’s month, and earnings vary enormously by category, region and format.

The bar is a cadence problem, so work it backwards

Turn the thresholds into rates and they stop being abstract.

• 4,000 watch hours in 12 months is about 77 hours of watch time a week.
• 3,000 watch hours in 12 months is about 58 hours a week.
• 8,000 watch hours in 365 days, the new bar, is about 153 hours a week.
• 3 million Shorts views in 90 days is roughly 33,000 a day.
• 10 million in 90 days is roughly 111,000 a day.
• 20 million in 90 days is roughly 222,000 a day.

Most channels have never done that arithmetic, which is why the bar feels like a lottery. Watch hours and Shorts views are separate races, so pick the one you are running, then finish the sum.

1. Divide its threshold by its window to get the weekly or daily rate.
2. Find your median watch time per video across your last twenty uploads, not your average, and divide the rate by it.
3. That is how many videos a week the bar demands at your current retention. Compare it with what your team genuinely makes, approves and ships.

Where the two do not meet, the gap is capacity, packaging or approvals. Better ideas do not close it.

Why chasing the subscriber number is the wrong order

Subscribers are the easiest number to move with the least useful methods, and the hardest to convert.

Watch hours and Shorts views are earned per video. Subscribers are what happens when enough people find a video worth returning for, so the count trails the other two.

YouTube’s own framing points the same way: the new entry test is stated entirely in watch hours and Shorts views, with no follower number attached.

Build what produces the leading numbers first: one format that repeats weekly, a packaging standard for titles and thumbnails, a fixed publishing slot, and a retention review after every upload. That is platform mechanics work, and it compounds in a way a subscriber push never does.

What actually disqualifies a channel

Rejections cluster around originality, and those policies judge a channel as a whole rather than one video.

YouTube’s “reused content” policy allows material you did not create yourself when viewers can tell there is a meaningful difference between the original and yours. Critical review clips, reaction videos that comment on the original, and edited footage you add a storyline and commentary to all qualify.

Taking someone else’s content, making minimal changes and calling it your own is the violation. Where YouTube cannot clearly tell that you made it, monetisation can be removed from the entire channel.

The sister policy is “inauthentic content”, renamed from “repetitious content” on 15 July 2025 and clarified to cover content that is repetitive or mass-produced.

Both matter most to brands that repurpose. Cutting your own podcast, event footage or product films into Shorts is safe. Assembling other people’s clips, or generating variations of one video at volume, is the trap.

Should a brand channel monetise at all?

Most guides assume yes. For a brand channel it is a real decision, because watch page ads put advertising inside your own viewing experience and you do not choose who appears.

Say yes when the channel is a media property in its own right, when the audience already expects ads, and when the revenue is material next to what the channel costs to run.

Say no, or wait, when the channel is short and high intent, when every second is carrying a commercial job, or when a competitor running before your best film would cost more than the revenue is worth.

The fan funding tier is a separate decision. Memberships and Super Thanks suit a creator-led or founder channel far better than a corporate one, and switching them on with no community behind them adds surfaces nobody uses.

What to track every month

Make the bar visible instead of mysterious. Six lines on one page, reviewed monthly:

• Valid public watch hours in the trailing 12 months, never lifetime.
• Valid public Shorts views in the trailing 90 days.
• Videos published against videos planned.
• Median watch time per video, and whether it is moving.
• Any active Community Guidelines strikes or monetisation policy warnings.
• Whether the AdSense link, the account owner and 2 Step Verification still sit with someone who works here.

Subscribers can sit on the page as context. They should never be the line the review opens with.

What good looks like

A channel that clears the threshold does not usually push for it. It arrives.

The signs are unglamorous. One format that repeats, a slot the audience can predict, packaging reviewed before publish, and a backlog deep enough that a bad week does not break the schedule.

Shorts are made to lead somewhere rather than to exist, which is why turning Shorts views into long-form watch time is the more useful project. The threshold then shows up in a monthly review as a fact rather than an ambition.

How NBK thinks about YouTube monetisation

Monetisation is an output of a publishing system, not a target you aim at directly. The programme measures watch hours, views and policy compliance, and all three come from cadence, packaging and process.

NBK’s team has run channels at publisher scale, over 600 million views a month and more than 300 years of watch time every month. At that volume the thresholds are not the interesting question.

What holds a channel back is almost always the same short list: too few slots, approvals that take longer than the idea stays fresh, and no agreed standard for what ships.

Next step

If your channel publishes regularly and the watch hours still are not moving, the constraint sits in the system rather than the content. NBK can help find it, then rebuild the cadence and packaging behind it.